Port Louis — France paid tribute on the day before to the poet and statesman Aimé Césaire, a fierce critic of colonialism and a father of the "negritude" movement that celebrated black pride and consciousness.

Césaire, who died last Thursday at the age of 94 was commemorated at a state funeral in his native Martinique attended by President Nicolas Sarkozy, government ministers and senior figures from the opposition Socialist Party. Thousands of ordinary Martinicans had already paid their own homage as Cesaire's body lay in state in the football stadium of the Caribbean island's main town Fort-de-France.

"All French people today feel Martinican in their hearts," Sarkozy said in a short speech before the ceremony. "Martinicans should know and understand that the 7,000 kilometres that separate them from the mainland have never counted so little." In mainland France, the ceremony was followed by a crowd in front of the Paris city hall where it was broadcast onto a giant screen and television stations also carried the proceedings.

In deference to Césaire's lack of religious belief, the ceremony in the packed stadium took the form of a "cultural homage" with readings from his works. The interest with which the funeral was followed in France underlined the respect accorded to Césaire, who was a fixture in Martinique and who regularly received a stream of visiting politicians and writers from the mainland. The firmness with which he defended his ideas was underlined in 2005 when he refused to meet Sarkozy, then Interior minister, over the ruling party's support for a law which proposed to recognise the positive legacy of France's colonial rule.